Ferocious Love

Solomon’s Song of Songs 8:6-7:

Set me as a seal upon your heart,

    as a seal upon your arm,

for love is strong as death,

    passion fierce as the grave.

Its flashes are flashes of fire,

    a raging flame.

 Many waters cannot quench love,

    neither can floods drown it.

If one offered for love

    all the wealth of one’s house,

    it would be utterly scorned.

Ferocious. The dictionary has several definitions of the word, but this one resonates with God’s love for us: an extreme or very great in amount, level, or degree.

God’s love isn’t lukewarm. It’s fierce, loyal, jealous. But in all the right ways. Fierce enough to become human and die for us.

Christ, the Lion of Judah, fighting for us against evil, and yet gentle as a shepherd caring for his sheep.  

Thank you, Lord, for loving us enough to become one of us and then die in our place, giving us eternal life. No gift is greater. No love can be more fierce. Amen.  

 

Merry Christmas! 

Merry Christmas!

 

Our Faith, a Reason for Joy or Guilt?

Photo by silviarita @ Pixabay

Does our faith make us so joyful we want to dance in the streets, or does it load us down with dos and don’ts? When we share our faith, do we make others happy, or do we make them fearful of a vengeful God?

The Pharisees did the latter, and Jesus chastised them for it. He brought the Gospel, the Good News, to a desperate people. Many heard and rejoiced. Do we?

For myself, I bounce between a heart singing with joy and one crushed with guilt. This season of Advent is an excellent opportunity to anticipate good things, celebrating not only Jesus’ birth but also family, friendship, and community. Christmas Carols and scripture readings are filled with joy and hope. Each dawn brings just as much chance of good things as bad. Shouldn’t we greet each day with a joyful expectation of the wonders and miracles God can do?

Even in bad times, there is always hope of a better tomorrow.

The night after my third husband passed away, my son and I went to the theater to see the movie, Castaway. I needed a distraction, some time away from the grief. One line stood out and has stayed with me for years.

After the main character lost the love of his life for the second time, he told his friend, “So now I know what I have to do. I have to keep breathing. And tomorrow the sun will rise, and who knows what the tide will bring in.”

Our faith is the tide that God uses to bring us hope for a better tomorrow, and after this life, an eternity in heaven with Him.

This Christmas season I challenge you (and myself) to see our faith not a list of dos and don’ts that crush our souls under their weight, but something so joyful we want to jump to our feet and dance.

 

A Season of Hope

Original Photo by Cecilia Marie Pulliam

These frosty, misty mornings of December fit the season, a tradition for Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere. Who doesn’t love Norman Rockwell’s renderings of Christmas? Images of family harmony, joy, peace, family gatherings, ladened tables, laughter, softly falling snow?

My family represented this vision for years until my husband passed away. His death fractured our family. We pulled away from those big, happy gatherings. My daughter was only sixteen. I tried for her sake to continue some of our traditions, changed slightly so they would not be reminders of what we had lost. My success was mixed, but the overall tone was a happy one.

After she left home, following her brothers with leaving the nest right after high school graduation, I followed new traditions.

Now, married again, with family strung around several cities and states, we have other traditions. We still decorate, although on a much smaller scale, but I cannot pass the season without a nativity, lighted garlands, and a small lighted tree, tabletop size, Christmas Carols and a fire in the fireplace. I’ll make my raspberry rolls to enjoy with coffee Christmas morning. Christmas Eve, instead of the boisterous family gathering at my folks’ place followed by Midnight Mass, my husband and I will join our neighbors for prime rib and good conversation.

The thread that runs through all of these traditions is the season’s message of hope. Everywhere we see joy and hope. The scripture readings are filled with hope of a peaceful, joyous world. The carols echo the same sentiments, peace on earth, joy to the world. We watch family favorite, happy Christmas movies.

The season is such a joyous one, even for those who do not celebrate the spiritual aspect. It is the time of year we give ourselves permission to be happy, and we pass that on to those around us. The salutations of Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays when we meet friends or strangers. We approach family gatherings with hope for peaceful, joyous interactions.

Then, in January, it seems this hope crashes back to pre-Advent attitudes, rushed, irritated, crushed by responsibilities and world issues.

Several years ago, I vowed to keep my Christmas hope and joy all year. For the most part, I did. Even during the dark moments, I clung to my hope of God’s presence, compassion, and care. Psalm 27 pops up in my devotions whenever I need the reminder that nothing is impossible with God. I only need to hang onto my faith until the sun rises again.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait for the Lord.”

How about you? Have your Christmas traditions changed over the years, or stayed the same? 

Permission to Be Happy

Photo by Stefan Nyffenegger at Pixabay

This time of year, people are happier than any other season. We see it everywhere in small kindnesses, cheerful greetings, and happy faces, except perhaps Black Friday. Yes, I’ve heard the horror stories, but more than any other time of year we have hope of good things to come.

For God to right all wrongs.

For our families will be healed and brought closer together.

For an end to violence and hatred.

For all of us to share in God’s abundance.

We’ve all been in those dark places where there seemed to be no hope. Then, a scripture passage, the kind word of a stranger, or the prayers of family and friends gave us hope of a better tomorrow. We only needed to hang on a little longer.  

Psalm 27 was among my morning devotions.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid? I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living. Expect the Lord, do manfully, and let thy heart take courage, and wait thou for the Lord.”

Psalm 27: 1-2, 13-14

That passage has brought me through many dark hours.

I once read a meme about the proverbial half empty or half full glass. I liked the author’s take. It didn’t matter whether it was half full or half empty because the glass can be refilled. 

And so can our hearts.

Thank you, Lord, for giving us the gift of your Son and the hope his presence brings. Amen.

Christmas Optimist, Pessimist, Idealist, or Realist?

We idolize the holidays, believing this special season changes the entire world and everything and everyone in it. Like Chuck Griswold, we become overly optimistic, believing in the ideal of the perfect family Christmas. Life is built on the imperfect, and we are usually greatly disappointed for one reason or another when our expectations are too high or unrealistic. Then we become pessimists at best and Scrooges at worst. I suggest something else - a true Optimist. An idealist who recognizes and acknowledges flaws, but chooses to focus on what is right, rather than what is wrong.

In the well known story, two boys were placed in separate rooms. One filled with every imaginable toy, the other with manure. After an hour observers went to each room to see the boys' reactions. Sure enough, the Pessimist could only complain. Nothing was right. Every toy had a flaw or defect. Noting this, the observers moved to the next room. To their amazement the Optimist was busy digging in the manure. They asked him what he was doing. His answer, "With this much manure, there has to be a horse in here somewhere!"

This holiday season will not be Courier and Ives perfect, not with family scattered across several states and cities and the usual dynamics causing conflicts and misunderstandings, or other concerns trying to push their way in to spoil it. It will be somewhere between A Christmas Story and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and with a little effort some What A Wonderful Life mixed in, filled with more blessings than I can count. 

I will go one step further. Those visitors on that first Christmas could have chosen to see only a poor family and a cold, dirty stable, but instead they saw the glory of God and the Salvation of Man, Emanuel - God With Us. 

Merry Christmas. May your holidays be blessed with love and joy in whatever form they take. 

St. Paul and Three Christmas Miracles

I think of Saint Paul often.  He thought of himself as the lesser Apostle, not worthy of being called an Apostle. I feel the same unworthiness being called a child of God. I recount my failings in an endless cycle I can’t seem to stop.

  

While the Apostle often speaks of his transgressions and weaknesses, he also exhorts God’s mercy. God forgave all of his sins, including the persecution and murder of the Church, and called him to be an Apostle.

This same mercy also applies to my sins. Yet I still fall into an all too familiar state of wretchedness, which seems to escalate during the holidays.

Christmas day, I struggled with wanting to go to church and dreading going alone. I decided to put my personal issues aside and attend.

 A woman walking just ahead of me, stopped and said, “Good morning.”

I smiled. “Good morning. I see you’re going alone too.”

She nodded. “Yes. Shall we go alone, together?”

My smile broadened. “Yes.”

God’s first miracle. This woman and I sat together as friends although we had never met. We shared the knowing looks, the small talk, the smiles, and the little courtesies good friends share. 

Just that was enough, but God had more planned for me that day.

As our pastor told us the story of the angels appearing to the shepherds, I saw a vision of angels surrounding him, a line of celestial bodies extending farther than I could see, a tiny glimpse of the glory of that holy night. God's second gift. 

The scene changed. I saw my death, my body collapsed on the floor of our living room.

Jesus appeared, reached down and grasped my hand. He pulled me up into his embrace, put his arm around my shoulders, and personally escorted me into heaven. He showed me amazing things, delighting in my astonishment with each revelation as a loving parent would a child. With my every exclamation, His joy increased.

The vision faded, but not its impact.

  

I no longer fear death. How can I?

I understand St. Paul’s desire to complete this race we call life. I am ready anytime God calls me, but in the meantime, I will live my life with an altered set of priorities, and with less fear. God's third gift.

“In all things we suffer tribulations, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute; We suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not: Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death works in us, but life in you.” 2 Corinthians 4: 8- 12

Foot Note: It just occurred to me, the church I attend is named for St. Paul. God never leaves out a detail. 

Christmas Past, Present, and Future

This time of year means different things, depending on the person and their situation. My family focused on the religious aspect growing up. My parents wanted my sister and me to concentrate on Christmas Mass, and so we opened gifts Christmas Eve.

Later, with my own family, we changed that tradition to Midnight Mass Christmas Eve and opened presents on Christmas Day.

In later years, after the loss of my husband and with both sons out on their own, my daughter and I struggled to keep traditions. They brought a mixed set of emotions. The first year after my husband passed away, I waited too long to buy a tree. Not a single lot had a tree I could afford. I brought three accent trees home from the flower shop. They weren’t Christmas trees, more of a bonsai Sequoia. We laughed every time we looked at them, turning our melancholy joyful.  

After my daughter married and left home, Christmas became another holiday to endure with memories of what was. After my husband’s passing, we stopped the big family gatherings, the gift giving, and almost all the traditions. They were too painful those first few years.

I eventually remarried. My daughter and sons had families of their own and their own traditions. We still yearn for those remarkable Christmases of the past, those big joyous celebrations with twenty people for dinner, a whole department store wrapped under the tree, grandparents drinking coffee and watching the kids with their presents. Perhaps my children can recapture some of that with their families.

My holidays are much quieter, simpler, particularly Christmas. We exchange phone calls rather than gifts. I spend more time reflecting, meditating, praying. I am thankful for my husband and our quiet celebrations. Life changes and moves on.

My husband and I will share dinner with close friends and their family rather than try a large gathering with my family since snowy, icy roads, and long distances, prevent travel at Christmas. We did manage to all gather in my hometown this past Thanksgiving for the first time in ten years. With luck, it won’t be ten years before the next gathering, holiday or not.

I am acutely aware of how precious those times are. My parents won’t be with us much longer. My dad is eighty-seven, and my mother is eighty-two. My children are in their middle ages, and I’m counting decades I thought were a lot further away.

However, putting those thoughts aside, at the moment, snow is falling outside, covering everything in white. The fire is on, Christmas Carols are playing, a cup of coffee sets on the table next to me. My husband and I will put up our tree this afternoon even though no one will see it except us. We plan on a special Christmas Eve dinner for the two of us. I’ll attend Mass Christmas day alone. There will be the phone calls, the good wishes, and photos.

Melancholy doesn’t rule the season even though it does promote reminiscing. Contentment is the word I would choose, a slowing down from the hectic former years, a quiet time for reflection and praise-giving for past blessings, current blessings, and future blessings.

I hope your season is filled with peace and joy however you spend the holidays. If you are alone, my prayers are with you. Remember, we are never really alone. God is there in every situation, every season, every holiday.  

Merry Christmas.

A Less Than Perfect Christmas

TV and movies depict the epitome of Christmas: the perfect tree with piles of presents, mom and dad smiling and loving, siblings being kind and respectful to each other and their parents. At least that was what Holywood used to portray, and what everyone wanted. Now? I don't know. I haven't watched family sitcoms in a long time and don't know what kind of family life they portray. I suspect it isn't the Cleavers.

Most families fall short of the ideal family - if there is such a thing - and the holidays can be very stressful when old wounds (and new ones) can't be laid aside. My family is no different.

We were close once, at least I thought so. However, recent events indicate I wore rose colored glasses and didn't see the truth - until now. My own pain has opened my eyes and I  can now recognize, and empathize, with other families coping with dysfunction and the holidays. I don't have any solutions or any suggestions on how to fix what is broken. But, God offered me His opinion on the matter.

While praying over my family situation, this scripture came to mind: "Do not think that I came to send peace upon the earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's enemies shall be they of his own household." Matthew 10: 34-37.

Three Christmas Miracles

Photo byChris Sharp at "FreeDigitalPhotos.net

In the first part of my faith life, God had to shout in order to be heard over the din of my worry, fear and impatience. As I learned to trust, His voice softened and yet it still held surprises, such as the unexpected appearance of a rainbow or particular scripture. Psalm 37 is one of these.  In the past the appearance of this scripture was a forerunner to major miracles, like meeting and marrying my husband.

This past week, a friend posted a video titled, A Letter from God.  The music and the scripture verses were beautiful, but it was late and I was tired. I decided to save the post and watch it later. However, an internal voice urged me to take the extra few minutes and listen.

Psalm 37: 3 -5 was one of the listed scriptures. "Trust in the Lord and do good and dwell in the land, and thou shalt be fed with its riches. Delight in the Lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart. Commit thy way to the Lord, and trust in him and he will do it".

Which desires of my heart was He referring to?